


The Kindness of Strangers

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [5]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Violence, Hiatus, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Murder, One Shot, Post-Reichenbach, Revenge, Sophia Kratides has suffered a lot OK, Stabbing, Story: The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, holmes is though see if you can spot him, watson's not in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-21 09:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14282076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: To my brother in heaven, to my earthly judges, and to any of the Kratides family to whom these pages may come.I, Sophia Kratides, make this testament so that all who read may know the true story of the final days of Wilson Kemp and Harold Latimer. When I have told all the truth, I will sign and seal it and give it into the keeping of the stranger who was sent by an outraged God to assist me in my hour of peril. He has sworn that while I am alive, he will never divulge its contents to a living soul, unless it is necessary to save his own life.****Six weeks after the death of James Moriarty, Sophia Kratides meets an elderly Italian count in the garden of a second-rate hotel. A few hours later, two men are dead.This is a stand-alone story, but may be more enjoyable if you read"O Paradis"first. Watson does not appear in this; but for poor Holmes, out of sight is not out of mind.





	The Kindness of Strangers

June --, 1891

To my brother in heaven, to my earthly judges, and to any of the Kratides family to whom these pages may come.

I, Sophia Kratides, make this testament so that all who read may know the true story of the final days of Wilson Kemp and Harold Latimer. When I have told all the truth, I will sign and seal it and give it into the keeping of the stranger who was sent by an outraged God to assist me in my hour of peril. He has sworn that while I am alive, he will never divulge its contents to a living soul, unless it is necessary to save his own life.

 

One afternoon, months after my flight from England, I sat in the garden of a second-class hotel in Buda-Pesth, taking tea with Harold Latimer and Wilson Kemp. Harold's eyes, always roaming the world in search of pleasure and profit, came to rest at last upon a table laid next to a willow-tree, at which a solitary gentleman was dining alone. I saw why he had attracted Harold's attention. The solitary gentleman's rich mourning dress and the golden pince-nez upon his nose spoke of money. The dusty state of his hat showed he was traveling alone, with neither wife nor valet. The grizzled streaks in his hair and beard, plus a certain tremor in the hand holding his teacup, spoke of age and infirmity. The paper he read was in Italian, indicating that he was a stranger not only to Hungary but to the Hungarian language.

Harold was always looking for the next mark. He had found him. 

When the waiter appeared at our table, Harold asked him if he would send a glass of their best Tokay to the gentleman at the other table, with our compliments. The waiter nodded. I felt the nausea that always accompanied this opening move. I knew my part in this by heart, and my performance seldom failed to please him. But even in those evil days, I could not quite suppress all sense of shame.

Harold returned to his tea. I stole a glance at the gentleman at the other table. I saw him glance up at the waiter. He shook his grizzled head, annoyed, and shot an unfriendly glance at the nuisances who had thus disturbed him. The gentleman's eyes rested upon us for a moment, and he seemed to change his mind. With a nod and a murmured, "Grazie," the gentleman accepted the offer. The waiter returned with a crystal glass full of golden liquid. The old gentleman polished it off rapidly. Kemp, though studiously not looking in his direction, nevertheless observed his avidity, for he let out one of his singularly repulsive giggles.

The waiter returned, bearing an unopened bottle. As he presented it to us, polishing it with a cloth to remove some dust from the label, Harold's eyes grew bright. The old man had chosen the most expensive bottle on the hotel's list. Here was an unexpectedly rich target.

"Count Almaviva presents his compliments, and begs that you will accept this token in gratitude for your hospitable gesture."

At this, Harold raised a hand and pretended to demur. At last, he turned toward the old gentleman at the other table and said, "Signore, I beg you, it is too much. We cannot possibly accept this unless you would consent to share it with us."

The old gentleman rose, rather stiffly, from his chair, and crossed the grass toward us, dangling his walking stick from one gnarled hand. Kemp rose to draw out a chair for him. The gentleman acknowledged him with a nod, then turned toward me and made a creaky little bow. 

"Buona sera, signorina," he said. 

I extended my hand. He took it, pressed his lips gently to my glove, and released it, fixing me with an unexpectedly keen gaze from a pair of lively blue eyes. 

Harold rose, hurriedly. "My apologies," said he, in English. "I've forgotten to make the introductions. One's habits do become a bit...relaxed, on the continent. Count Almaviva, this is my sister, Miss Honoria Flossmoor and my friend and business partner, Mr. Woods. I myself am director of the firm Flossmoor and Windibank. We do a modest business in the wine trade. I must tell you, signore, your generosity quite overwhelms our humble gesture, and I beg therefore that you will be the first to taste this excellent vintage."

The old Count accepted, with a grave inclination of his head. The waiter drew the cork and poured him a mouthful. The Count tasted it, considered a moment, then gave the nod. I declined my glass, but Harold and Kemp were glad enough to take theirs. 

"And so it is business that brings you to Buda-Pesth, yes?" said the Count, in halting and heavily accented English. "The harvest this year in Eger, I have heard, is extraordinary."

"Indeed," Harold agreed. "This has been a journey of remarkable revelations and exalted possibilities. Are you a connoisseur yourself, sir?"

The Count shook his head gently. "An amateur only. With wine, for me, it is as with many things: I love, but I do not pretend to understand."

Harold and Kemp laughed. I smiled. He seemed a kindly old man, and the more we talked with him the more pity I felt for him. His wife, he said, had recently passed away. Their marriage had, alas, been childless, and she had been his only comfort. He had not truly known how much he loved and depended upon her until she was taken from him. His _dottore_  had pressed him to go abroad, and to form new associations and acquire new tastes and interests. So far, he had been following his advice out of duty only. It was only now, in Hungary, that he had begun to take pleasure in any of the sights he had seen.

"You have been to see Buda Castle, of course," Harold said.

He nodded. "Yes. Beautiful, beautiful. And the many fine churches."

"And the Opera House?"

The Count winced slightly. "I fear no. The building, I know, is wondrous. But opera, she does not agree with me. She gives me--how is the English word--heartburn?"

Harold and Kemp laughed heartily. After Harold explained to the old gentleman, he joined good-heartedly in this laugh at his own expense. "I must apologize," he said at length. "I would not have you think the city has offended in any way my stomach. No no, the food I have found here is indeed my chief pleasure."

Harold and Kemp here vied to surpass each other in their praise of goulash and paprikash and various other local dishes which I knew they ate only with extreme reluctance and much grumbling. Kemp wondered aloud what was the name of that restaurant they had eaten at the night before, where they had seen things done with beets that he would have thought no human could attempt. Harold could not recall but thought it might be that little place round the corner, with the garden and the grotto. Kemp said he would ask the concierge, and asked the Count if he would consent to accompany them to dinner, should they eventually find the place. The Count agreed. Kemp withdrew. A few minutes later, the waiter appeared with an envelope on a silver salver. Harold opened it, read the telegram it contained, and rose.

"I beg that you will excuse me," he said. "A Hungarian vineyard owner whose business I have been courting for three days has finally agreed to sell. I am afraid, my dear, that I must meet with him immediately."

This was addressed to me. As always, I replied, "Do not distress yourself, my dear brother. I am sure the good Count is content to be my chaperone until you return."

The Count seemed, at first, slightly startled; but an instant later he was nodding eagerly, and promising to defend my honor with his life if necessary. Harold made his apologies and departed, letting the telegram fall to the table. The Count looked at it. It read, in English, "PREPARED SELL 1000 CASES. CASH ONLY. TODAY ONLY. JANACEK."

"Well," I said, smiling into the poor man's infatuated face. "Perhaps I will have a glass of wine, after all."

The Count gestured to the waiter. After he had poured, the Count waved at him. The waiter seemed to interpret this as a signal to leave us alone. I sipped my glass slowly. 

"So, Signore," I said. "You have never been to Buda-Pesth before?"

"Never," he said, in Greek.

I stared at him.

"The Signorina will excuse my little presumption," he continued, in the same language. "Your English is fluent and, I may say, delightful, but it does still retain just a touch of Mediterranean lilt. I take it that neither of your companions has any Greek."

I tried to turn a sigh into a coquettish smile. "Not a syllable."

"Excellent. Then even if Woods happens to return, he will not hear me asking the question I have longed to ask ever since I first laid eyes on you."

I braced myself. This would mean kissing, at least, and probably a few other familiarities, before I was able to get down to business. "And what question is that, mio signore?"

Pushing the pince-nez up the bridge of his nose with one hand, and smiling at me fatuously all the while, he said, "Are you traveling with these gentlemen of your own free will?"

My heart began to flutter wildly. I said, nervously, "Good heavens. Why would you ask such a question?"

"Oh, it is purely conjecture," he said, waving one hand before returning it to the knob of his walking stick. He spoke Greek with excellent tone but with a curious formality of expression and a very archaic vocabulary. "I am cursed with an overactive imagination. When I see a young and attractive unmarried woman traveling alone with two gentlemen, both older than she is and obviously unrelated to each other, I begin to wonder. When I am then invited by those men to a tete a tete with them and their beautiful companion who is clearly not English even though she is introduced as an Englishman's sister, inferences suggest themselves. And try as I might, I cannot help but note that the grape harvest in Eger this year has in fact been entirely ruined by unseasonal frost, that the wine you are sipping is an utterly unremarkable Riesling bought in bulk and then re-labeled with the name and year of a rare Hungarian vintage, that nobody in your party of wine-traders noticed the difference, that no Englishman of Mr. Woods's class ever turns down an opportunity to complain about the cuisine of the country in which he is traveling, that Leos Janacek is a Czech composer and not a Hungarian wine merchant, and finally that your 'brother' watches your every movement with an interest which I certainly hope is not actually fraternal."

My pulse was racing. With fear, of course. But also because I could not answer the question. I hated every minute I spent with Harold and with Kemp. I longed to be free of this thieving business and of them. But could I say, truly, that I was not here of my own choosing? Could I accept the help that this unexpectedly keen-witted old gentleman was evidently on the point of offering me?

The old man cocked his head slightly to one side, listening. "Out of the waves I see a weasel," he said.

I stared, again. "I beg your pardon?"

He shook his head and tried again. "That...rodent...Mr. Woods is returning. We must abridge this delightful conversation. Know that I am ready to come to your aid if called upon. I will also be pleased to dine with you alone this evening, as it will obviously be arranged for me to do; but I feel duty bound to inform you that I am myself so nearly penniless that it is hardly worth anyone's while."

Mr. Kemp, indeed, approached the table, bowed, and began to profess his apologies. A second telegram had arrived; his services would be needed at the point of sale. He would, however, conduct us with pleasure to the restaurant whose name he had finally ascertained, and asked that we would be so good as to send their firm the bill. The Count protested that he would not think of doing so, but that he would be pleased to dine with me at the restaurant named. Reassured by the Count's ill-suppressed eagerness and by my usual brilliant smile, Kemp departed. 

"Well," the old gentleman resumed, in Greek. "Is it necessary to go through the restaurant performance? Are there confederates there, for instance, who will inform your traveling companions of your non-arrival?"

I took a long look into his bright eyes. I saw sorrow in them, and kindness, and courage. 

"No. They have no confederates here. They will be away most of the night upon their own business."

He nodded. "I see. Your 'brother' is an accomplished pickpocket, or at least fancies himself one."

The old count withdrew, from his breast pocket, a golden pocketwatch that Harold had taken off a tourist at Buda Castle that morning, and laid it upon the table. I gasped.

"I was obliged, for strategic reasons, to let him make away with a valuable ring of mine," he said. "I'm content with the exchange. This is far more saleable. The ring will fetch more, but will be easier to trace."

"Who  _are_ you?" I breathed.

He smiled, sadly.

"I am a poor sick man who has come to Buda-Pesth in hopes of healing a broken heart."

"That is not true."

"Excuse me. It IS true."

"It does not satisfy, then."

He shrugged. "Who among us is ever satisfied? I will put the question again: Are you with these men of your own free will? Do you require assistance?"

I felt the tears come to my eyes.

"I am not ready," I said.

His brow furrowed. "I do not take your meaning."

"Perhaps you know the _Confessions_?" I said, forcing a coy smile. " 'O Lord save me, but not yet?'"

He looked back at me, and shook his head, and sighed.

"I will keep the watch, I think," he said, closing his hand upon it and pocketing it. "But you must have something to show for your night's work."

He took out a pocket-book and counted out the notes, dividing them neatly in half. He returned half to his pocket book, then deftly rolled the others in one hand and passed them to me. 

"No, sir. I could not possibly."

"Signorina, I must insist," he replied. "I will not submit to being drugged and 'rolled;' but I would not for the world have them return tonight to find you empty-handed. Please."

With great reluctance, and to avoid attracting attention, I took the roll of notes and tucked it into the bodice of my dress.

The Count rose, collected his walking stick, and bowed to me. "I am staying at this hotel under the name Almaviva. My room on the ground floor, with green shutters, just beneath that wrought-iron balcony."

I said, "We have the two rooms across the corridor."

"How fortuitous," said the Count. "Consider my question carefully, signorina. Good evening."

When he had gone, I returned to my single room, and examined the roll of notes. The Count was indeed very close to penniless. I replaced them in my bodice, and looked about me. The paper on the walls had once been spring green and bright white. In some patches they still were. Age and damp had muddied the rest of it, until I began to feel that I was in an underground cave overgrown with lichens. The bed was hard. Harold would return with Kemp sometime after midnight. He would wait for Kemp to drop off, then slip into my room. I would submit with hatred and anger to the caresses that I had once so avidly desired. I would involuntarily recall those first passionate weeks in Breckenridge, when I rejoiced in the knowledge that I had given up everything for love. Those days when I cared nothing for family, for friends, or for my reputation, and thought only of Harold and of true love. Then Paul, then flight, then this. Days and nights of this. How had I endured them? _Why_ had I endured them?

The clock in the square struck one, and I was still lying on my back on the bed, in my dress and shoes. Thinking, waiting, listening. At last I heard them. Their voices in the corridor. The rattle of the keys in the door to their room. Harold laughing. It had been a good night, evidently. They would be sitting down now, taking off their coats and shoes, drinking whiskey in their shirtsleeves, smoking cigars and counting their money.

I rose from the bed. I knelt and said a prayer which only my brother and heaven will ever hear. I slipped out into the corridor. Nobody was about. I knocked quietly on Harold's door. He was surprised, but pleased enough, to hear my voice. The key turned in the lock, and the door opened. 

"Sophia," Harold said, putting one hand around my neck and pulling me in to kiss him. "What a pleasant surprise. How'd you make out with the old man? Any more where that came from?"

Harold nodded toward Kemp, who sat with his elbows on the table. He was turning in his short, thick fingers a man's golden ring, set with an emerald that sparkled in the fitful candle-light. The table was littered with coins, notes, pocket-books, and other bits of jewelry; but none as brilliant as that jewel.

"Let me show you," I said.

I walked over to the table, reaching inside my bodice. Kemp turned toward me, and looked up, leering. 

I pulled the knife from my bodice. I thrust it straight into his giggling throat. 

Kemp's eyes bulged. I withdrew the knife. The blood flew everywhere. My hands, my face, my eyes. Kemp fell out of the chair, clutching at his throat, gurgling and writhing. Half-blinded with blood, I turned on Harold. His fist struck my head. I reeled; he struck again. I fell, still clutching the knife. He stepped on my arm, bent over, and wrenched the knife from my hand. 

"Sophia!" he shouted, it seemed more in surprise than in anger. "Have you gone mad?"

I nearly  _went_ mad, at that instant. Had they forgotten the crime they were now to repay? Was Kemp dying  _without understanding_ why I struck him? 

Harold picked up the knife. I rose. I drove at him. He struck me again. 

Then, suddenly, someone else was in the room. I did not see him enter. I was dizzy from Harold's blows, half-blinded by Kemp's blood. I heard a sharp crack, then another. I tried to rub the blood from my eyes with bloody hands. I blinked it away. I saw a young man, hatless, dressed all in black, bringing a walking-stick down upon Harold's head. The stranger struck with the stick again, in Harold's stomach. Harold doubled over. The stranger seized Harold by the hair and dragged him to the nearest wall, throwing him up against it. 

Harold no longer held the knife. I dropped to my hands and knees, crawling along the floor. I heard the stranger tell Harold, in English, not to move, not to speak, that he would ask the questions.

The knife was under the table. I reached quietly for the hilt. 

"Now," I heard the stranger say, in English. "It is too late for a doctor, and none of us want the police. Let us discuss our options. Please note at the outset that laying your hands upon Miss Flossmoor, ever again, is not one of them."

Harold stared into the stranger's eyes. My own were clearer now. I saw that the young man was dressed in the Count's clothing, and held the Count's walking stick aloft in one hand, as he waited for Harold to admit defeat.

"Miss Flossmoor, would you please close and lock the door to this room, and let me know whether you see or hear anyone in the corridor."

Over the stranger's shoulder, Harold saw me lift the knife. I put a finger to my lips, nodding at the stranger's back. Harold gave a tiny nod of understanding. I went to the door. All was silent and deserted. I did as the stranger had asked. I put my knife hand behind my back, and began stealing toward the stranger.

"Please," I said, to the stranger. "Do not hurt him. I love him. He has treated me wretchedly; but I love him."

Harold raised his hands in surrender, and gave the stranger a confident and insinuating smile. "You heard the lady, Mr....?"

"Let's stay with Almaviva," said the stranger. "It will make things simpler."

It was the Count, after all. I had thought so. But he was beardless now, and smooth-faced, with a full head of black hair slicked back and freshly oiled. Even his hands looked twenty years younger.

Harold laughed, disarmingly. "Well well well. I missed the mark this time." He held up his hands in surrender. "I'm sure we can come to some mutually beneficial arrangement, Almaviva. But could you first take your hand off my throat?"

The stranger smiled. He lowered his stick, and lifted his other hand. He took a wary step backward, away from Harold. Harold glanced at me, and nodded.

I leapt forward. I pushed the stranger out of my way and threw my body against Harold's, pushing him into the wall. With my right hand, I drove the knife into Harold's side, between the fourth and fifth ribs. 

The stranger gave out a cry of horror, muffled as if he had clapped his own hand over his mouth.

Harold gasped and shuddered, staring at me, trying to stammer.

"That was for me," I told him. "And this is for--"

The stranger seized my hand before I could strike again. I turned on him in fury, holding the knife aloft.

"Don't!" the stranger cried, piteously.

The stranger's blue eyes were wide with terror. He held up his hands before his face, as if to ward off the blow. His breath was shuddering. His hands were shaking. So was the rest of him.

I heard Harold slump to the floor. I turned to look at his body. His legs were thrust out like those of a disused doll. Blood poured from the rent in his side, and bubbled in his gaping mouth. His eyes stared, fixed and unseeing, up at the room's whitewashed ceiling. I would not have to strike a second time. In a few moments, the breath had left his body, and his soul was in Hell. 

"You..."

The stranger's voice died. He stood rooted to the spot, still shaking. I glanced at Kemp. He lay, motionless, face down, in a pool of blood near the table. His chair lay overturned behind him. I would never know what his last thoughts were. 

My hand tightened on the knife hilt. I turned back toward the stranger. His eyes did not seem to see me. He looked utterly lost.

I had always planned that after the knife had feasted on Kemp and Latimer, I would bury it in my own breast. But I could not do this before the poor Count, or whoever he really was. He had risked his life to come to my aid. The horror of my vengeance appeared to have unhinged him. He was alone in the world, running from the police. If I ended my own life, they might find him here the next morning--perhaps charge him with my own murder as well as those of my victims. I must postpone the final reckoning. I must see him safely through this.

I walked toward him, and made to take him by the arm. He backed away from me, collapsing into the other chair. He drew his feet up, nervously, and folded his legs, till he looked like a seated Buddha--only without the generous belly or the air of serenity.

"My dear Count, what is the matter?" I said, dropping my knife hand out of sight. "Are you ill? Can I help?"

He stared at me. In the looking-glass on the wall behind the table, I saw my own head and shoulders. My face was a network of scarlet streaks and smears. There was a bloody handprint at the base of my throat. Strands of my dark hair had come loose and were dewed at the ends with blood. A madwoman. A modern Electra. Medea of Buda-Pesth.

"I don't know what's the matter," the stranger answered, in English, in a voice that barely climbed above a whisper. "This has never happened to me. It must be acknowledged, however, that I have also never witnessed a man being stabbed to death in cold blood."

"Cold blood!" I said, striving to keep my voice low. "It was they who killed my brother in cold blood. Before they took me out of that house I knelt by his poor starved body and I swore on my life that his death would be avenged. And at last it is."

The stranger blinked. He turned his face toward me. The light of reason returned to his piercing blue eyes.

"Good God," he whispered. "You're Sophia Kratides."

Now it was my turn to stare. "You know me? How?"

"I...how could I not know you  _at once_? Why did I not see it immediately? Two men and one woman, who speaks Greek..." The stranger struck himself on the temple with the heel of one hand. "Appalling. Alarming. Too much grit in the instrument. You must excuse my temporary weakness, Miss Kratides. I can only attribute it to my having recently been through a bit of...stabbing...myself." His keen eyes were darting all over the room, as if memorizing its details. "I fear I cannot explain to you the interest that I take in your case without putting both of us in grave danger. At any rate, there is no time. We must act quickly."

I could not reply. My breath had caught in my throat. I had borne my shameful life so long as I still had this work to accomplish. But to be named by this stranger, who now knew everything, brought all of the shame back upon me. My heart, which had only just begun to expand in exultation, was crushed beneath it. The knowledge that he knew me, that he knew my story, was like a knife in my own heart. 

But the stranger, now that he had named me, was transformed. He ceased to tremble, and seemed suddenly quite at home perched upon a chair above a pool of blood and surrounded by dead men.

"Now," said the stranger. His voice was cool, and wonderfully reassuring. "The first question is what we do with their bodies, and the second is what we do with our own. I do wish you had thought to use poison. Stabbing makes for the worst kind of crime scene. This room is a shambles and you are drenched in evidence. These murders certainly will be discovered, and there certainly will be an investigation. The trick is to create a false narrative which is on the one hand bold enough to be noticed even by the official police, and yet not so obviously constructed that some more than ordinarily imaginative policeman might detect the hand of an artist."

He looked at the door, the bed, the sodden rug, the wall, the table. One of his long, thin hands shot out to grasp the emerald ring and pocket it deftly. Finally he looked back at me. His expression softened.

"My dear Miss Kratides," he said. "You never imagined a life beyond the deed, did you?"

I shook my head.

"And yet, I am determined that you shall have one; and if my powers do not lie _entirely_ in ruins, you will. The difficulties are considerable," he went on, sounding almost happy. "Ah well. We can but try, as W--as we say in England. This is an ugly sort of problem, but it has the charm of novelty. First, I must ask that you stand still, exactly where you are, and that you return that knife to its original hiding-place for the time being."

I tucked it back into the makeshift sheath I had constructed inside my corset. He let out a small sigh of relief.

"Second, please catch up your skirts and hold them close to you, so that they do not trail in the blood or create any new stains.'

I obeyed. I felt no embarrassment at all. He was not even looking at my ankles. He was leaning over, at what seemed to me an impossible angle, bracing himself on the table with one hand and with the other lifting up Kemp's head by the hair to study the wound. His hands were steady now, and his gaze dispassionate, almost clinical.

"Very professional," he finally murmured, gently lowering Kemp's head back to the floor. "You have been practicing."

I had. For months. But never on anything alive. 

"We will incorporate, as much as we can, that which actually took place," he said, as if he were explaining a difficult lesson to a favorite student. "The less we have to fabricate, the fewer opportunities for mistakes. Fortunately, our motive is right here on the table. Two thieves falling out over a division of the booty. Now. Who struck first?" He glanced from one sprawled corpse to the other. "Kemp. Obviously Kemp. Once Kemp took that blow to the throat he would have--" the stranger mimed clutching at his own throat--"and that would have been his last action in this world. So, he stabbed Latimer first, then Latimer stabbed him and then...and then what?" 

The stranger looked at me, as if he expected me to answer.

"I don't understand," I said.

"It is a question of motivation," said the stranger. "There is blood all along the floor, leading toward the back wall where you stabbed him. The wall, fortunately, is clear. But we must account for this pool of blood here," he said, pointing at the stain spreading around Latimer's body, "and also this wide swath of gore curving toward the table. Where did that come from, I wonder?" I opened my mouth, but he went on. "Ah, of course. You crawled over here to get the knife after I knocked it out of Latimer's hand. Dear, dear. It will be hard to tell this story with only two characters. It's a wood floor, and we will never get all the blood up; to try would only give us away."

The stranger paused. His brows came together as he thought in silence. He looked at Latimer's body. He snapped his fingers.

"Of course!" he said. "Capital idea. Thank you, W--" The stranger looked down, suddenly, and coughed into one hand. "Excuse me. Touch of grippe. We can't clean up any of this blood, but we can always make more. So. Latimer is in this chair, Kemp in the other. Words are exchanged. Tempers flare. Kemp...all right, the chair will have to be round here, Kemp has to strike him in the left side. Kemp stabs. Latimer, who is..." The stranger looked at the objects on the table, and at the bruises beginning to show on the side of my head. "Right handed?"

I nodded, in wonderment. The stranger stepped gingerly down from the chair, on tiptoe, taking care to avoid the blood spatters. He lifted up the chair and then placed it in what he judged to be the correct position. He perched upon it again. He mimed stabbing, with his left hand, and the place where Kemp's throat actually was when I first struck him. He withdrew the imaginary knife, and looked at the tablecloth. His eyes ran along the track of blood on the floor. I saw them fix on the pillows at the head of the double bed.

"Did Latimer carry a weapon?" he asked. 

I shook my head. "He used his fists."

The stranger's eyes came back to mine.

"The blackguard," he said.

I felt my eyes sting. Tears came. Then shuddering. Then sobs. I tottered, but I did not fall. I understood in some confused way that I had been lifted, sobbing, in the stranger's arms, that the door had been unlocked, that I was being carried. The stranger laid me gently down upon his bed. I heard the clink of a glass against the neck of a bottle. He lifted my shoulders up with one arm, holding the glass to my lips with the other. I gulped down the burning liquid. He withdrew his arm, gently.

"All right?" he said, gently.

"What was that?" I sputtered. 

"Brandy."

"Why?"

"Because that's what--well, to be honest, I don't actually know why. Does it make you feel any better?"

I said, "You are very kind."

He smiled, sadly. He said, "Miss Kratides, I have work to do across the corridor. It is not difficult--the solution is clear in my mind--but it will be tedious and unpleasant and may take some time. I will do it all; and I will ask only two things of you."

I said, "I will do whatever I can to help you."

"One, that you give me the knife you used, along with any other weapons you may have secreted about your person."

I drew out the knife with some difficulty. The blood had begun to dry, and it had begun to stick to the sheath. The stranger drew a handkerchief from his breast pocket and lifted the knife gingerly with it. He turned toward the dressing-table, on which a pair of his gloves sat. He picked up one, drew it on with his teeth, then transferred the dagger to that hand.

"And the one in your left boot, please," said the stranger, drawing on the other glove in a similar manner.

I sat up. I extracted it from its hiding-place, with some reluctance. He took it in his gloved hand, and gave a low whistle. 

"It's beautiful work," he said. "Where did you get it?"

"I lifted it from a shop in Tunis."

"Excellent!" he exclaimed. "Excellent. Now for the second promise."

My heart sank as I waited to hear it.

"You must promise me not to flee from here until I have returned. You can't hope to escape detection as you are. Your clothes are not salvageable; bloodstains can never be completely shifted. They will have to be burned. You must also bathe, and wash your hair. I am fortunate to have secured an en-suite bathroom. It is devilishly expensive; but I dearly love a hot bath, and I never intended to pay my bill. Please step into the bathroom, remove all your clothing, place it upon the tiles, and help yourself to this establishment's soap and hot water. I will make the necessary adjustments to our crime scene, collect your things from your room--and perhaps a few things from their room--and return with them. At that point, you may make your escape; but please, not  _until_ then. You do not want to be on your own in a strange city with only the clothes you're standing in. You must prepare. Do you promise?"

I looked at him. I said, "I promise."

He closed his eyes with a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Miss Kratides. I will not go far."

He disappeared, closing the door gently behind him. 

Had any other man in the world taken me into his own room and told me to undress and have a bath, I would have climbed out the window the instant his back was turned. Instead, I ran the bath, removed with some astonishment and disgust my blood-stiffened clothing, and climbed in. The hot water seeped into my pores. I scrubbed myself off and drained the tub. I stepped out onto the tile.

Then I ran another bath. I climbed back into the tub. And I sat there, in the clean hot water, with the sweet-smelling soaps, and closed my eyes. I floated. I felt as if I were weightless, rising up from the earth into a cloudless sky. They were dead. It was over. I need never speak to Harold Latimer, need never feel his touch, ever again. I need never hear Kemp's giggle or feel his eyes upon me. I could go anywhere, amongst anyone. Sophia Kratides's story was over. Who knew what story I might now begin?

I heard a discreet knock at the door. "Miss Kratides? I've brought you your clothes, and as much cash as can be spared. I'll be in your room, making a few final adjustments."

After the door shut, I stepped out. There was a fire crackling in the grate, and upon the bed he had laid out the newest dress I possessed and my only other pair of shoes. I dressed quickly, and put up my wet hair as best I could. I was lacing up my boots when he returned, carrying one of Latimer's packing-cases.

He flipped open the lid and began rooting through it. He removed a pair of trousers, looked at it critically, put it aside on the bed. He continued with a shirt, and waistcoat, until he had assembled a complete suit of clothes. Then I heard him gasp. He withdrew, gingerly and as if he could not believe his eyes, a violin-case.

"Whose is this?" he asked, eagerly.

"Harold took it from a workshop we passed in Cremona," I said. 

The stranger looked at me. "No. Not really."

"He did," I answered. 

"May I keep it?" he said, plaintively.

"My dear Count," I replied. "You have rescued me from my pursuers and given me life. All they have is rightfully mine; and all I have, I give you, with all my heart."

With tears shining in his eyes, he set it beside him on the bed. He went into the bathroom and emerged carrying my bloodstained clothes in a bundle. He drew up a chair by the fire, and tossed my shirtwaist into the flames. I watched them burn.

"This will create quite a bit of ash, and an unusual amount of smoke," he said. "But we are not in Paris, or even London. It will be all right."

"Sir," I said. "Please tell me who you are. I must know to whom I owe my freedom."

He looked up at me in astonishment.

"To yourself, of course," he said. "Any trifling assistance I may have rendered after the fact can hardly make up for--"

He broke off, staring moodily into the flames. 

"Regarding your broken heart," I ventured, at length.

He sighed. 

"I do not in fact have a wife," he said, gloomily. 

"Instead you have...?"

He lifted the poker and stirred the ashes. 

"A friend. I have a friend. I _had_ a friend."

"He is dead?"

The stranger's face fell, as he watched the scraps of fabric curl and flake away. 

"He is...mislaid."

The stranger went to his bedside table and opened the drawer. He took out of it a false beard and moustache, and a golden pince-nez. He looked at them, and looked at the flames. He shook his head, and put them in Latimer's case instead.

"Mislaid?" I said. 

He told me, as the flames burned into the night, a sort of fairy tale, through which I could sometimes see the shape of a strange and secret truth. When he was done I sat with him in silence. 

"You will excuse my prying," I said. "But surely, after all this, you must allow me to count myself among your intimate friends."

He looked up at me, sadly, and almost smiled.

"I should be honoured," he said. 

"Then, as your friend, let me tell you that if I were he, I would be searching for you."

He shook his head. "He thinks me dead. Or worse."

"My friend, there is nothing worse than dead. Not even dishonoured."

I said it somewhat sharply. He glanced back at me, puzzled. 

"If he is not searching for you, then why are you not searching for him?"

"I know where he is," said the stranger, abruptly. 

"This seems to me to be very simple," I said. "He cannot come to you; so you must go to him."

"I don't know if he still wants me."

I stared at him.

"You don't know?" I repeated. "You don't  _know?_  Go and ask him!"

"You don't understand. There are men waiting for me to do exactly that. They are waiting there to kill me, as soon as I go back to him."

I could not believe this. "They are waiting for you; so what? You write to your friend, you tell him you are coming to him. He tells his friends. You return, your enemies strike at you, your friends swoop down upon your enemies and kill them. Problem solved."

He stared at me. At first, he looked angry. Then, he laughed. 

"It is not so simple as that," he said. "There are such things as laws. You do not understand--"

"Excuse me," I said. "I understand much. I understand that when one is simply surviving, when one is thinking every day how will I eat, where will I sleep, how will I endure the touch of a man I hate--when every day is like that, when every day it takes all your wits to live, then survival becomes all you know. I understand how many days go by and you forget that you ever wanted more than bare life or that there was ever a time when you had it. You think this is all you will ever know. You think it will never change. And the thing you long to do, you do not do, because you cannot imagine that you can do it, or that there can be anything that comes afterward."  
  
I rose from where I had crouched by the fire, and began to gather the few things I still had to take with me. 

"Then one day a stranger is kind to you. You did not expect it. You do not understand it. You realize: there is more in the world than you can know. And you do the thing you have longed to do. And it does not kill you. And you are free."

He looked up at me. His eyes were shining with tears. 

"Thank you," he said.

And then he cleared is throat, and was all business.

"You must go," he said. "I suggest the window. If you leave through the door someone might see you in the corridor, and remember." 

"And you will stay here?"

"I must see the thing through. As my room is nearby, they will question me. If need be, I can throw them off the scent."

I crouched down by him. I took his thin and wounded face in both hands. I felt no embarrassment. I felt that I would never know embarrassment again. 

"Promise me one thing," I said. 

And we made our vow. I would write down the story, as it happened, as I am doing now. I will give it to him to keep. If indeed he ever becomes a suspect, I will by then be far away. If he is convicted, he will show them the document and save himself. 

To the courts and the world: You may do with me what you please. I am a free woman, and every breath I draw from this moment forward will fill me with new joy.

To the stranger, my friend, I say again:

Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.

Before God and before the spirit of my brother who is at last at rest, I affirm this to be the true story of the deaths of Harold Latimer and Wilson Kemp. May they burn in hell for all eternity.

SOPHIA KRATIDES.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Greek Interpreter" is a sad story, and the ending is very unsatistfying. Doyle must have thought so too, because he tacks on a paragraph at the end that implies that after leaving England, Sophia stabbed Kemp and Latimer somewhere in Budapest. It occurred to me that this might have happened during the time frame of the Hiatus. Then it occurred to me that Holmes never actually meets any of the people involved in that case except for Melas and the dead Paul. So if he and Sophia met while they were on the run...they wouldn't necessarily know each other. Et voila.
> 
> I used "Greek Interpreter" before, in "The Young Men Carbuncular," but in YMC Sophia never really appears and her story is even more tragic than it is in ACD canon. I'm glad that in this story I was able to give her a new lease on life.
> 
> The title comes from Blanche DuBois's last line in A Streetcar Named Desire. I liked the idea of them both meeting at what is a real low point in both of their lives, and somehow being able to help each other.


End file.
